The First Quarry - Softcover

Collins, Max Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857683640 ISBN 13: 9780857683649

Publisher: Hard Case Crime, 2011

Synopsis

BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

Crime fiction readers know Quarry, the ruthless killer-for-hire, from Max Allan Collins’ acclaimed novels – most recently THE LAST QUARRY, which told the story of the assassin’s final assignment (and was the basis for the feature film The Last Lullaby).

But where did Quarry's story start?  For first time ever, the best-selling author of ROAD TO PERDITION takes us back to the beginning, revealing the never-before-told story of Quarry’s first job: infiltrating a college campus and eliminating a professor whose affair with one of his beautiful, young students is the least of his sins...

About this title

About the Author:

Author of Road to Perdition, the acclaimed graphic novel that inspired the movie, and of the multiple-award-winning Nathan Heller series of historical hardboiled mysteries, Max Allan Collins is one of most prolific and popular authors working in the field today. He is also the literary executor of Mickey Spillane.

From Booklist:

Indefatigable genre veteran Collins brought back his hit-man hero Quarry two years ago (The Last Quarry, 2006) after a 30-year hiatus. Now he flashes way back to reveal how Quarry got in the killing business. Naturally, it started in Vietnam, where ne’er-do-well Quarry found something he was good at—killing people; later, after a wrong turn or two back in the States, he hooks up with a broker who runs a murder-for-hire business. Quarry’s first target: a philandering college professor whose latest conquest happens to be the coed daughter of a Chicago mafioso. Rationalizing that the prof is a dead man whether or not Quarry does the deed, our antihero takes the job. Like Lawrence Block in his hit-man series starring the similarly one-named Keller, Collins manages the neat trick of engendering sympathy for a killer by muddying the moral waters: plot complications change the terms of the deal, requiring Quarry to do his killing out of self-preservation rather than cold-blooded commerce. Either way, Collins knows the terrain, mixing pulp-style action with just enough character building to keep us going. Great entertainment from a pro’s pro. --Bill Ott

About this edition

• Publisher: Hard Case Crime
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0857683640
• ISBN 13: 9780857683649
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 208